Your Introduction to a Week of Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton, seen on June 2, is opening a national tour promoting her new book.

Associated Press

Get ready to see plenty of Hillary Clinton as she opens a national tour promoting her new book and stumps for Democrats running in the midterm elections.

ABC News landed the first interview with Mrs. Clinton tied to the release of her book, “Hard Choices.” The network aired a snippet of a longer interview with Mrs. Clinton on its Sunday talk show, “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.”

In the segment aired Sunday, ABC’s Diane Sawyer asked her about her timetable for announcing her decision, her health condition, and her views on a new round of House hearings devoted to the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans.

A few highlights:

On the presidency:

She said she will spend the rest of the year promoting her book and helping candidates running in the midterm elections. Mrs. Clinton also said she will be thinking hard about whether to run for president. Asked if she expects to announce her plans in 2015, she said; “I’m not positive about that but the way I make decisions, that’s probably likely.”

Her health:

She opened up a bit about the health scare she suffered in December 2012 when she passed out, hit her head and suffered a concussion. She was later found to have a blood clot in her head.

Mrs. Clinton said her health was “very good, thank you.”

Asked about the severity of her ailment, the former secretary of state said, “It was, you know, I think a serious concussion.” The blood clot, she said, “was the scary part.” She added that “because of the force of the fall, I had double vision for a very short period of time and I had some dizziness.” Still, she said, she suffered no “lingering effects” from the episode. Asked if she would release her medical records should she run for president, she said, “I would do what other candidates have done, absolutely.”

The Democratic field:

Some Democratic strategists have said Mrs. Clinton is such a force in the 2016 Democratic presidential contest, the field is effectively frozen until she decides what to do. Asked if she is putting other prospective Democrats at a disadvantage by not announcing her plans sooner, Mrs. Clinton said no.

“People can do whatever they choose to do on whatever timetable they decide,” she said. She noted that her husband, Bill Clinton, didn’t officially begin running for president until the fall of 1991–about a year before the 1992 presidential election. “People will do what they think is best for them,” she said. “And whether they choose to seek the presidency or not is very personal for everybody.”

Her age:

Now 66, Mrs. Clinton, if elected, would be the second-oldest person to be sworn into office behind Ronald Reagan in 1981. When Ms. Sawyer asked about her age, Mrs. Clinton said, “Isn’t it great to be our age?”

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